An update!
Yes a long time between posts, no excuses.
For those of you who haven't heard yet:
My Girlfriend
The last part of China went quite well. Not much in the way of finals, so they were some of the easiest A's I've ever gotten.
The only event of note was the aforementioned lady of superlative quality.
I had actually known her for quite some time by the time of my last post. However At that point friendness was still prevalent.
We met because she was looking for an English tutor, so she went to the building where she heard some Americans were living and I happened to be the first foreigner to walk in the building, at which poiunt the building attendant pointed at me and said "Hey, talk to him, he speaks some chinese!." So I begans tutoring her, and then hanging out with her, things really started to accelerate after we had hotpot together, but didn't come to a head till two days before the end of the semester.
However that story isn't not one I feel like sharing yet.
I came back to the U.S. through Hong Kong. I flew to Shenzhen, and then took a Taxi to the train station, then walked across the border to Hong Kong. This saved me over 1000 yuan, does this make sense to you? After I found my hotel I had fun wandering around Hong Kong for a while. I still think that if I end up needing to live in or near China, Hong Kong is the place I'd like it to be. When I was going through security at the airport one of the guards who looked at my passport wished me a happy birthday. HAH! Too late friend, I'm leaving my new girlfriend for a hometown 12,000 miles away.
Still, the airport express part of the Hong Kong metro is really cool. At any of the stations on the line, you can check in, get your boarding pass, and either wander around the town or just get on the metro and go straight to the airport. Public transportation in Hong Kong is awesome.
Coming back wasn't that much of a shock, kind of surprisingly. The biggest thing I noticed is that I kept getting thirsty, looking in the fridge and not seeing any bottled water, and then giving up and just getting thirstier. Then I would remember that it's ok to drink out of the tap in the U.S.
Yeah...
I did get some culture shock when I got back to college though. Everyone here is just so white and Minnesotan. It's also been my hardest semester thus far. I'm taking Industrial Organization, Differential Equations, A Proofs class, and my upper division theology which is really more of an American history class (this is a good thing). I feel like I'm beginning to get a handle on it in the last month of the semester, but that's a little late, ah well.
I'll leave you with one last obervation: In all of my math classes the desks/chairs are organized into a nice grid pattern. In my econ classes they're always disorganized but roughly facing the place where the prof. stands. Thoughts?
For those of you who haven't heard yet:
My Girlfriend
The last part of China went quite well. Not much in the way of finals, so they were some of the easiest A's I've ever gotten.
The only event of note was the aforementioned lady of superlative quality.
I had actually known her for quite some time by the time of my last post. However At that point friendness was still prevalent.
We met because she was looking for an English tutor, so she went to the building where she heard some Americans were living and I happened to be the first foreigner to walk in the building, at which poiunt the building attendant pointed at me and said "Hey, talk to him, he speaks some chinese!." So I begans tutoring her, and then hanging out with her, things really started to accelerate after we had hotpot together, but didn't come to a head till two days before the end of the semester.
However that story isn't not one I feel like sharing yet.
I came back to the U.S. through Hong Kong. I flew to Shenzhen, and then took a Taxi to the train station, then walked across the border to Hong Kong. This saved me over 1000 yuan, does this make sense to you? After I found my hotel I had fun wandering around Hong Kong for a while. I still think that if I end up needing to live in or near China, Hong Kong is the place I'd like it to be. When I was going through security at the airport one of the guards who looked at my passport wished me a happy birthday. HAH! Too late friend, I'm leaving my new girlfriend for a hometown 12,000 miles away.
Still, the airport express part of the Hong Kong metro is really cool. At any of the stations on the line, you can check in, get your boarding pass, and either wander around the town or just get on the metro and go straight to the airport. Public transportation in Hong Kong is awesome.
Coming back wasn't that much of a shock, kind of surprisingly. The biggest thing I noticed is that I kept getting thirsty, looking in the fridge and not seeing any bottled water, and then giving up and just getting thirstier. Then I would remember that it's ok to drink out of the tap in the U.S.
Yeah...
I did get some culture shock when I got back to college though. Everyone here is just so white and Minnesotan. It's also been my hardest semester thus far. I'm taking Industrial Organization, Differential Equations, A Proofs class, and my upper division theology which is really more of an American history class (this is a good thing). I feel like I'm beginning to get a handle on it in the last month of the semester, but that's a little late, ah well.
I'll leave you with one last obervation: In all of my math classes the desks/chairs are organized into a nice grid pattern. In my econ classes they're always disorganized but roughly facing the place where the prof. stands. Thoughts?